* Posts by This Side Up

442 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Nov 2011

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MPs blocked from ogling 'web smut' 300,000 times – while in Parliament

This Side Up
Coat

Re: Really?

'Also it defined our local Scout district website as "gambling"'

They must have confused gambling with gambolling.

'WTF! MORONS!' Yahoo! Groups! redesign! traumatises! users!

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Unhappy

If something works ...

Why can't they bloody well leave it alone?

Nokia drives cars into the clouds: Hear HERE, you're here, hear?

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WTF?

999?

"every new car sold in Europe will be required to feature an embedded mobile phone capable of dialling 999 the moment it hears the tinkling of glass."

That won't do much good in the rest of Europe. 112 would be more sensible,

Peak Apple: Samsung hits DOUBLE the market share of iPhones

This Side Up

The last thing

Apple should be doing is following Samsung and going down market. It should be working on the next high quality disruptive product.

End of an era as Firefox bins 'blink' tag

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Coat

Bootnote

"* We would have loved to honour HTML syntax and surround the word "blink" with angle brackets, but doing so risked making the story unreadable in some browsers or causing El Reg's publishing apps to choke on tag we don't use."

Er, have you heard of < and > ? Or do I have to type < and >?

Gov: Smart TV bods must protect users from smut-riddled badness

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Mushroom

Re: Is There Any Point To This?

"Surely any decent citizen will have already instructed their ISP to block this filth-laden smut at source, won't they?"

Logic error. The ISP will almost certainly have no control over the source of the smut.

This Side Up

"Whats the real reasons behind this bollocks?"

Cameron trying to look like he's actually doing something to people who understand the internet even less than he does.

This Side Up
Stop

NSGM

Nanny State Gone Mad

Forget Snowden: What have we learned about the NSA?

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Headmaster

Do the math

"In 1948 the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a child born in that year would be 65 today"

No, about half of those still alive would be 65; the rest would be 64.

BBC abandons 3D TV, cites 'disappointing' results

This Side Up

Re: Pseudo Holographic TV - No glasses needed

How would that system cope with multipe viewers?

This Side Up
Coat

Re: The glasses

Where, as in "where did I put those wretched glasses".

This Side Up

Re: It was "stereoscopic", not "3D".

It's binocular at best (for the reasons already given). The best 3D effects are achieved with a moving camera e.g. an aircraft flying over mountains. For that you don't need any special technology.

Spending watchdog SAVAGES rural broadband push

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Joke

Mags down pants?

Phone books aren't what they used to be. :(

This Side Up
Thumb Up

Re: Ideal profit margin

"One alternative would be to split the network off BT, Virgin et al and have a single government owned network. No digging the same road up three times to supply different suppliers. Only QOS as a benchmark. Guaranteed to work. Like the railways, or the roads."

Yes, we need a publicly owned infrastructure provider like Network Rail, not like Railtrack. This could be BT Wholesale/Openreach. The service providers could then compete on a level playing field. Private monopolies are always in it for what they can grab for their shareholders.

If we still had the GPO they would just do it because they were being paid to do it, not because they expected to make a profit. They might use far more people than were really needed (like British Rail) but they would get there in the end.

Gone

This Side Up

Re: Secure OS

Apart from "there's no such thing", the safest OS is one that

a) is scarce enough that it isn't worth while anyone bothering to attack it;

b) is owned by someone who isn't important/rich enough to attack regardless;

c) lets you know exactly what it's running;

d) has an email client that displays messages in plain text and shows links clearly;

e) has a web browser that displays link URLs clearly and doesn't run any active code;

f) doesn't allow automatic remote installation or updating of software;

and probably a few other things I haven't thought of.

Rest your head against a train window, hear VOICES in your SKULL

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Pint

What they really need to do

is use this technology on a pad fitted above a gents' urinal so if you rest your forehead against the wall when you're pissed you get advertised at. Oops, sorry, i shouldn't have suggested that.

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Stop

Re: So can I send Rupert an invoice for my train ticket?

"Advertising on TV means I can watch the TV for free."

Except that you pay for it in the price of everything you buy, and as a nation we pay a lot more for commercial tv than we do for the BBC.

UK telcos chuck another £1m at online child abuse watchdog

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FAIL

Re: And none of it will achieve anything

Of course it won't achieve anything. It's not meant to. It's politics. It's "something must be done". It's meant to give the impression that the government is doing something and not sitting on its hands.

Of course the real effect will be to get paedophiles clamouring to join IWF!

NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron

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Big Brother

Re: Nothing to fear?

So let me get this right. If GCHQ want's to know the content of emails about people living in the United Kingdom it just has to say "Please Minister can we have authority to know the content of emails abut people living in the United Kingdom" and the minister says "Yes, of course you can have authority to know the content of emails about people living in the UK," and that's it. Note "about" and not "of", "to" or "from".

All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters

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Childcatcher

Whole home?

Well I'm relieved to know that my smart fridge won't be downloading pr0n in future.

Now what about mobes?

Smart TVs riddled with DUMB security holes

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Flame

Re: Not so smart

I have a dumb Sony HDD/DVD recorder that's just as bad. Also you have to push the TV/DVD button before sound comes out of the audio outputs, although there is a picture of sorts (jerky) on the HDMI output and some feint breakthrough of the sound straight away. Changing channels can take several seconds. It won't accept any commands while it's starting up. Sorry Sony, never again!

This Side Up
Coat

Rouge content

I like the idea of "streaming rouge content" (see linked article). I'd be more concerned about bleu content!

BBC boffins ponder abstruse Ikea-style way of transmitting telly

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Flame

The first thing I'd want ..

.. would be to be able to turn off gratuitous background music, all pre-recorded trails and interference on the tv screen like "coming next", "press red", silly little logos and continuity announcers crashing credits.

Fancy some mobile filth? New logo tells you when not to bother

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Devil

Sounds like a challenge to me

I mean it'll be more fun getting around the filters than seeing what you find at the end. And of course it will give naïve parents a false sense of security.

As for opt-in or opt-out, does it really make any difference? Just tell the ISP whether you want parental controls or not.

62,000 fewer shops: Welcome to the High Street of 2018

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Re: Record Industry style tactics?

Well no, the record industry went down the pan because it buried its head in the sand for too long. Sorry about the mixed metaphor. Actually online shopping is shifting jobs from town centre shops to warehousing and distribution, which is actually a much more efficient use of resources. It also replaces one-person-one-car-one item journeys with planned delivery rounds which must reduce carbon emissions.

This Side Up

Re: Great news for the Taxman ( not)

VAT will still be payable for UK-based on-line retailers, and import duty except for small items (which loophole could be stopped). They can only offshore their profits to avoid tax, and of course local/commercial taxes will be lower for out-of-town warehouses.

Microsoft caves to Google, pulls YouTube app from WinPhone Store

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Pint

No ads?

"Google ... claimed the app violated YouTube's terms of service by allowing users to download videos to their devices and skirt around content restrictions – and by not displaying YouTube ads."

Sounds like exactly what the customer wants!

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Headmaster

Re: I can hardly believe

"a growth from 2 people to 6 people is 300% growth"

Er, 200%

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Headmaster

Re: I can hardly believe

"a growth from 2 people to 6 people is 300% growth"

400% actually.

'Hotmail, since you changed to Outlook, you've been a massive pr**k'

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FAIL

Should have done more - NOT

"It’s very clear we could and should have done more"

Wrong. They should have done less. Windows 7 is OK, given that it's Windows.

Brits on benefits: 'Dole office site only works on PCs over 10 YEARS OLD'

This Side Up

Re: Question

Well at least it does work with some browsers over 10 years old. It's not difficult to design a web site which will work with any browser, though maybe Mosaic that doesn't even support tables would make things a bit difficult. For that matter does it do forms?

Anyway I'd rather have a straightforward web site that works with any browser and platform (and isn't specially tailored to IE6 on Win95) than one stuffed with vast amounts of javascript, css and other unnecessary bloat.

Yahoo! Axes! Yet! More! Products!

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Re: Yahoo! Groups!

"I use Yahoo Groups. The interface sucks and sadly, nobody has worked on it in ages."

That's why it's stable. They don't keep tampering with it every few weeks like farcebook. I'm on a number of groups and they work well as mailing lists. I don't use the web site much except to look for archived posts.

Web minister Maria Miller: UK WILL hit 2015 broadband target

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Meh

Weasel Words

"More than two thirds of premises now have access to superfast broadband"

I guess "have access to" means "could have if they wanted it", not "have got". Anyway since when has 2Mbps been "superfast"?

"Broadband has a fantastic role to play,"

Quite clearly Miller is fantasising.

Linux in 2013: 'Freakishly awesome' – and who needs a fork?

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"each day some 10,519 lines of code are added to the Linux kernel"

which means it's getting big and bloated like other OSs I could mention.

Remember Streetmap? It's suing Google in a UK court

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Stop

Re: I remember streetmap...

I use Streetmap because Google maps has serious browser compatibility issues. It's unusable on this platform. Unfortunately SM haven't done themselves any favours by adopting some awful mapping from one supplier at the street level. When they used Bartholomews it was very good. Now we have lots of missing names and junctions which aren't junctions or have no vehicular access.

Wanna put your toaster and fridge online? Over to you, Ofcom

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Devil

Can I put my Ideal Domestic online?

Then I could tell it to put another shovel-full of coke on.

This Side Up

Re: Wanna put your toaster and fridge online?

Well if I could tell the fridge what to get out of the freezer and defrost before I got home...

Orange is the new TalkTalk of the broadband complaints league

This Side Up

Re: Bad and good

I use PlusNet and have had reasonably good service. There are the occasional DNS issues but it's good value. I happen to have an Orange PAYG SIM for my dumb mobile, which is OK if you don't need their customer services and you can put up with stupid texts about magic numbers or dolphin something-or-other which I delete straight away. You can't even reply STOP to them.

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FAIL

So 'free' doesn't really mean free after all.

"The ISP provoked a barrage of gripes from bellyaching customers when it yanked its free broadband service away from punters who refused to pay line rental to the company."

They've probably done the punters a favour. Why can't they just market it as a broadband plus telephony service?

New-age tech marketing secrets REVEALED

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Thumb Up

Not only young people

"To put it bluntly: young people can see right through this crap and they are functionally immune to things like product placement, jiggling imagery, spamvertising, cold calling and high-pressure sales. Not only have two whole generations been inoculated against this crap, using these techniques actively triggers enmity among today's discerning technologists."

Exactly, but it doesn't only apply to young people. I'm a fully paid-up baby boomer and feel exactly the same way.

Give me the information I need. Cut the crap!

Movie, TV ads annoying? You ain't seen nothin' yet

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Pint

Re: Necessary Evil

"I agree that money doesn't necessarily buy the best, but the truth is unless they replace US actors with British replacmenents (complete with fake accents to make them acceptable over here.. weird but true)"

Now there's a challenge for technology - automatically convert US accents to corresponding English accents and vice-versa (plus Scottish <> Canadian, Welsh <> Mexican etc.)

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WTF?

Why bother?

"... about how they continue to fund these multi-billion-dollar global content initiatives at the same time as satisfying the needs of people who aren't prepared to really pay for them,"

I for one would be very happy if they didn't make these multi-billion-dollar movies at all. If people aren't prepared to pay for them then they shouldn't get them. It's called supply and demand.

Anyway just because a product appears in a film or tv show, why should that fact make me want to buy it. So what if James Bond drinks Heineken instead of Vodka-Martini? I still prefer Rebellion IPA or Black Sheep or Exmoor Gold ...

Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC

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We should have a tv tax

I mean the BBC should be funded out of general taxation, based on the agreed fee per household. That would get rid of all the costs associated with collecting, administering and enforcing the current licence. British tax payers could then watch tv wherever they are. You would only need to make special arrangements for overseas visitors e.g. a tourist tax.

Drunk driving: No more dangerous than talking on handsfree mobe

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Distractions

Yes there are lots of distractions but some are easily avoidable. I know very well that if I'm listening to a radio programme and typing a reply to El Reg at the same time I won't remember what was on the radio. The same applies to having a phone conversation or texting whilst driving: you're thinking about what you're saying or typing whilst driving on autopilot. It's not just a visual distraction - it uses a lot of your mental capacity so less is available for driving. And it's not just plain reaction time that suffers. You end up gazing straight ahead and not glancing sideways or using your mirrors, observation suffers and you don't perceive hazards until too late.

Business conversations are likely to be far more distracting than a simple "I'm stuck in a traffic jam". In fact I think the law goes too far with handhelds. It should be OK if you're stopped with the handbrake on and the gearbox in neutral or park. As it is you must remove the ignition key before using the phone.

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Stop

Re: "limit of 0.5 g/l"

"Yurop has gone into retardation level territory due to rampant voter whoring and pressure to bring in the dough, with limits that now just trigger false positives on alcometers. Lose your license, no problem."

Faulty logic. Driving ban = not driving = not buying fuel = not paying fuel duty = loss of dough to guvmint.

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Happy

Nice to see sensible units being used

0.5g/l is so much simpler than 500mg/100ml, but then we can't expect our law makers to do anything sensible. I would however point out that 0.7 with no units is the same as 70% and not .7g/l.

Bye-bye Telinco - death warrant finally issued by TalkTalk

This Side Up

Spam?

I've been with PlusNet for a long time and their spam filtering is pretty good. I also have my own rules-based and Bayesian filters. It's not a big problem. But you can usually change your username without ditching your ISP. The latter could be inconvenient if you're running a web site inside the ISP's domain.

Heavily armed dolphins on rampage in Black Sea

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Happy

Send in the Seals!

About 19 days early innit?

RIAA: Google failing on anti-piracy push

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FAIL

100,000 notices?

"Most of the sites identified are those about which the RIAA itself has sent at least 100,000 notices of infringement to Google."

Surely sending 100,000 notices would have got them dumped as spam if not a DDoS attempt?

And I wonder if RIAA used Google to search for infringing sites, which could have promoted those sites.

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Joke

Recording Industry Ass. of America

You dont need the full stop!

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